Donald Trump Threatens to Increase Tax on Import of Indian Motorcycles

Washington, Feb 14: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday slammed India for import tariff on Harley-Davidson motorcycle while calling it “unfair”. During a discussion over the steel industry, Trump also threatened to increase the tariff on import of Indian motorcycles to the US.

This has come even as New Delhi reduced customs duty on imported motorcycles from high-end brands to 50 per cent. To this, Trump said that Indian government reducing tariff from 75 per cent to 50 per cent was not enough and said that it should be reciprocal, as the US imposes “zero tax” on the import of motorcycles.

“We have so many countries where we made a product, they make a product, ..We pay a tremendous tax to get into their countries — motorcycles, Harley Davidson — it goes into a certain country. I won’t mention the fact that it happens to be India, in this case,” Donald Trump said.

Referring to his last week’s conversation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Donald Trump said, “And a great gentleman called me from India and he said, we have just reduced the tariff on motorcycles, reduced it down to 50 per cent from 75, and even 100 per cent.”

“We have — if you are Harley Davidson, you have 50 to 75 per cent tax, tariff to get your motorcycle, your product in. And yet they sell thousands and thousands of motorcycles, which a lot of people don’t know, from India into the United States. You know what our tax is? Nothing,” the US President added.

Pitching for a “reciprocal tax” on the countries, that Trump said, abuse their trade relationships with the United States, he said, “So, I say, we should have reciprocal taxes for a case like that. I’m not blaming India. I think it’s great that they can get away with it. I don’t know why people allowed them to get away with it. But there’s an example that’s very unfair. I think we should have a reciprocal tax.”

“That’s called fair trade. It’s called free trade. Because ultimately, what’s going to happen — either we’ll collect the same that they’re collecting, or, probably, what happens is they’ll end up not charging a tax and we won’t have a tax. And that becomes a free trade,” Trump said.